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Charge your Life Alert bracelets and tune your hearing aids, because the forthcoming news is akin to having your age come swinging toward you like a wrecking ball: It is the 40th anniversary of rock legends Bon Jovi. Not that you’d guess it’s been that long by looking at Jon Bon Jovi himself, who appeared, feather-haired and dreamy, at the Television Critics Association conference on Friday.
Bon Jovi was there to promote the upcoming docuseries about his life and career, Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story, which premieres on Hulu Apr. 26. In news that will likely excite fans and delight critics who are exhausted by the recent trend of celebrity documentaries that are made with the involvement of the performer and amount to nothing more substantive than a superficial hagiography, Bon Jovi promised journalists that he never had any interest in ignoring the darker, more upsetting elements of his and the band’s past.
“One thing we agreed upon on day one was this was not going to be a VH1 puff piece,” he said. “That, if anything, I wasn’t going to stamp my feet and say, ‘I have final say.’ Gotham [Chopra] was the director. This had to tell the truth and have all the warts to go with it in order to tell a real truth. So I’m proud of the film” Journalists screened the first two episodes of the series, but Bon Jovi teased that “the deeper, darker, crazier stuff happens in three and four.”